This blog comments on a variety of technology news, trends, and products and how they connect. I'm in Red Hat's cloud product strategy group in my day job although I cover a broader set of topics here. This is a personal blog; the opinions are mine alone.

Wednesday, April 05, 2017

My May schedule has been something of a train wreck given a Red Hat Summit in Boston (use code SOC17 for a discount) that’s earlier than usual and generally lots of events in flight. As a result, I didn’t know until a couple of days ago whether I would be able to attend this year’s MIT Sloan CIO Symposium on May 24. I always look forward to going. This is admittedly in part because I get to hop on a train for an hour ride into Cambridge rather than a metal sky tube for many hours.

But it’s also because the event brings together executives who spend a lot of time focusing on the business aspects of technology change. As you’d expect from an MIT event, there’s also a heavy academic component from MIT and elsewhere. Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee, and Sandy Pentland are regulars. As I have for the past few years, I’ll be hosting a lunchtime discussion table on a topic TBD as well as covering the event in this blog afterwards.

This year the Symposium will focus on the theme, “The CIO Adventure: Now, Next and… Beyond,” and will provide attendees with a roadmap for the changing digital landscape ahead. Among the associated topics are challenges of digital transformation, talent shortages, executive advancement to the C-suite, and leading-edge research.

Kickoff Panel: “Pathways to Future Ready: The Digital Playbook” will discuss a framework for digital transformation and facilitate a conversation on lessons learned from executives leading these transformations. Virtually every company is working on transforming their business for the digital era and this panel will provide a playbook for digital. Featuring Peter Weill, Chairman, MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research (CISR); Jim Fowler, Vice President & Chief Information Officer, General Electric; David Gledhill, Group Chief Information Officer and Head of Group Technology & Operations, DBS; and Lucille Mayer, Head of Client Experience Delivery and Global Innovation, BNY Mellon.

Fireside Chat: “Machine | Platform | Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future” will be moderated by Jason Pontin, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of MIT Technology Review and feature Erik Brynjolfsson, Director, and Andy McAfee, Co-Director, of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE), discussing what they call "the second phase of the second machine age." This phase has a greater sense of urgency, as technologies are demonstrating that they can do much more than just the type of work we have thought of as routine. The last time new technologies had such a huge impact on the business world was about a century ago, when electricity took over from steam power and transformed manufacturing. Many successful incumbent companies, in fact most of them, did not survive this transition. This panel will enable CIOs to rethink the balance between minds and machines, between products and platforms, and between the core and the crowd.

Other panel sessions driven by key IT leaders, practitioners, and MIT researchers will include:

“The Cognitive Company: Incremental Present, Transformational Future”; “Cloud Strategies: The Next Level of Digital Transformation”; “The CIO Adventure: Insights from the Leadership Award Finalists”; “Preparing for the Future of Work”; “Expanding the Reach of Digital Innovation”; “Running IT Like a Factory”; “Navigating the Clouds”; “Winning with the Internet of Things”; “Talent Wars in the Digital Age”; “Who’s Really Responsible for Technology?”; “You Were Hacked—Now What?”; “Measuring ROI for Cybersecurity: Is It Real or a Mirage?”; “Putting AI to Work”; “Trusted Data: The Role of Blockchain, Secure Identity, and Encryption”; and “Designing for Digital.”

About Me

I'm technology evangelist for Red Hat, the leading provider of commercial open source software. I'm a frequent speaker at customer and industry events. I also write extensively on and develop strategy for Red Hat’s hybrid cloud portfolio.

Prior to Red Hat, as an IT industry analyst, I wrote hundreds of research notes, was frequently quoted in publications such as The New York Times on a wide range of IT topics, and advised clients on product and marketing strategies. Among other hobbies, I do a lot of photography and enjoy the outdoors.